By Allie Arnold

Staff Writer

When I was in the third grade, I experienced my first crush. In my 9-year old head, he was perfect for me because he was cute and I liked cute boys, so he became my boyfriend. I paid no attention to the fact that he was very disrespectful towards our teacher, made fun of me and called me names every day, or that picked his nose. He was cute, and I liked him, so he became my boyfriend.

If I saw a boy my age behaving this way now that we are in high school, I would run the opposite way every time I saw him. I obviously can not speak for everyone because for all I know, I just had really bad taste in boys at the time. But after asking around, I found that many people had similar experiences to my own.

When I developed this crush, I liked him right then and there, not knowing I would move on from him to another cute boy in my class a couple of weeks later. I had a mindset very similar to all 9-year olds, in which my thoughts and interests were constantly changing.

I didn’t care about his actions or the way he treated me. He was cute, and at the time, that was all I desired in a boy. I knew what I wanted, and I thought I would never look for anything else in a boy other than his looks.

Obviously I had become interested more in a boy’s personality rather than only his looks by the time middle school came around. However, while my mind didn’t change as much as it did when I was 9, I developed a whole new set of issues when it came to relationships.

Middle school was a very awkward time, not just for me, but for many other teenagers. At the time, talking to boys face to face was borderline uncomfortable and impossible, so naturally, texting was the go-to form of communication.

After asking many teenagers at Coppell High School about their own personal middle school relationships, most told me the same thing: “We mostly texted each other. We rarely had many face to face conversations.”

In middle school, I thought every relationship that anyone had at my age was as real and as deep as it got. However, considering what most relationships are like in high school, it’s interesting to look back and compare the two.

In high school there is more communication in the relationships, as well as a better understanding of who the other person is, and why you want to be with that person. While a middle school or elementary relationship might feel like the real deal at the time, growing older, most people realize that it did not have as much depth to it compared to the ones experienced in high school and beyond.